Deeplinks Blog posts about Cell Tracking

We took a stand for Twitter users Wednesday, and in an amicus brief (PDF) urged a New York City judge to reconsider his decision authorizing a broad subpoena to Twitter that seriously threatens the First Amendment and privacy rights of everyone on the Internet.

According to a recent investigation by the Swedish news show Uppdrag Granskning, Sweden’s telecommunications giant Teliasonera is the latest Western company revealed to be colluding with authoritarian regimes by selling them high-tech surveillance gear to spy on its citizens. Teliasonera has allegedly enabled the governments of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan to spy on journalists, union leaders, and members of the political opposition. One Teliasonera whistle-blower told the reporters, “The Arab Spring prompted the regimes to tighten their surveillance. ... There’s no limit to how much wiretapping is done, none at all.”

A New York judge's broad opinion, ordering Twitter to comply with a subpoena (PDF) and turn over account information about one of its users arrested for disorderly conduct in connection with an Occupy Wall Street protest, is worse the deeper you dig into it.

EFF, along with the ACLU of Northern California, is a sponsor of the California Location Privacy Act of 2012 ("SB 1434"), a bill that would require California law enforcement officers and agencies to seek a search warrant before obtaining electronic location information. Yesterday, the bill passed through the California Senate Committee on Public Safety and is now on its way to the full Senate for consideration. But when it gets there, it will be missing a major, important piece of its text: its reporting requirement.